We've got the Toshiba Portege G810 Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional phone in house, and there's a lot to like. This is a touch-optimized phone, in the vein of HTC's Touch family of devices and it has a flush screen as well as a customized user interface.

That interface comes courtesy of Spb Software, who developed the G810's user interface. It comes with Spb's Today Screen, Shell and full screen keyboard. These are very similar to the original HTC TouchFLO software, and in fact, Spb's been working on it longer than HTC. The UI is very fast thanks to Spb's excellent work, and they get a bit of help from the Portege's 400MHz Qualcomm processor.

The iPhone, Toshiba Portege G810 and HTC Touch Diamond

The Toshiba G810 is another one of the Swiss Army Knife family of phones that has pretty much every feature currently available for a mobile phone: GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 +EDR, a 3 megapixel camera with autofocus lens, FM radio and best of all: unlocked world-wide GSM AND 3G. That's right, the G810 supports US 3G HSDPA and in fact adds HSUPA (where supported) for faster uploads. So it competes directly with the HTC Touch Cruise feature-for-feature, but with a more attractive design. In fact, Toshiba's new G710, G810 and G910 are first Toshiba Windows Mobile phones devices that put emphasis on elegant and attractive design. The G810 also competes with HTC's Touch Diamond, but it lacks the Diamond's VGA display and accelerometer (though as of this writing, there isn't yet a US version of the Diamond). The G810 works great on AT&T's HSDPA network and automatically configured itself to use that network for data.

The QVGA display is extremely bright and sharp- as good as the iPhone's. Touch response is very good and overall, the resolution is well-suited to the 2.8" LCD-- it's easy to read and web pages are legible without zooming.

The G810 just released this week in Europe and its's sold by importers here in the US.

Here's a video walkthrough of the PDA phone, just under 5 minutes that shows the user interface, device speed, CoPilot 7 GPS navigation software (not included with the phone) in action and more.

We'll have our full review in a few days. Until then, feel free to post questions.

thanks for the review,there are some questions i would like to know,hope that you can give reviews about it next time,i)how is the performance when multitasking?e.g. opening IE,MS word,media player at the same timeii)does it have hand writing recognition?iii)how is the battery life?iv)how to lock and unlock the phone?v)How much is this phone?

Multitasking is good-- it helps that the G810 has 128 megs of RAM, though the Spb enhancements eat into that, there's still enough left for reasonable multitasking (5 apps running is fine, I haven't met a WinMo device that can handle 20 apps running).

Like all Windows Mobile Pro devices, the Toshiba has handwriting recognition-- both print and cursive.

It's too soon to judge battery life, I'll include that in the full review.

Lock and unlock the phone-- you mean the screen and buttons? By default only the power button turns it on, and that's recessed so it's hard to hit accidentally. In fact it takes work to hit it intentionally. There's also the usual WinMo Today Screen lock function.

Looks like you're in the UK, where it will likely be cheaper than here in the US since it's sold directly into the UK market. I believe Toshiba said the list price was $525US back when the announced it in Feb. at Mobile World Congress. Since this is the first week it's on sale (and not at many shops) the price is signficantly higher, but it will drop.

thanks for your quick reply,one more thing i would like to know is,what are the enhancements that toshiba-SPB provide?as far as i know,the UI is very similar to the standard SPB mobile shell that cost $29.95 from SPB home page.

You get the flush screen hardware design similar to HTC Touch devices and phones like the Prada-- makes it much easier to use your finger instead of a stylus. Using Spb's Shell and Pocket Plus apps is different and better experience on this hardware design.

The device basically has 3 Spb titles pre-installed: Spb Mobile Shell, Spb Full Screen Keyboard and Spb Pocket Plus. They're the same in terms of UI as the standalone versions of these apps, with some tweaks and customizations to ensure they run well and use as little memory as possible on the Toshiba. You can dismiss the Spb Shell and bring it back by pressing the Home button.

Toshiba has modified the Contacts app, made a finger-friendly camera application and that's about it on their end from what I can see.

The presence or absence of a multimedia-optimized video driver is up the manufacturer, and since they're 2 different companies, there's always hope. I haven't determined whose drivers are on the device though. So far, few companies have bothered really tweaking video on PPCs, so the chances are kinda slim.

It runs on the Qualcomm MSM7200, same as the Tilt/TyTN II.

So far, it's been very stable. I've only had to reboot it once when it stopped seeing the microSD card (a not uncommon issue with WinMo). It's not like the old Toshiba G900 which certainly had a couple serious bugs, that's for sure

I personally find it adequate for gaming, but prefer traditional hardware buttons for gaming. I haven't met touch (non-mechanical) buttons that rival the traditional type yet for gaming. I've played a few flight shooters and an RPG and it's OK, but for platformer style games it's not great. The games themselves run just fine (quickly and smoothly).

The ringtone volume is average- similar to the TyTN II/Tilt and Touch Dual. For any of these, if I'm in a really crowded, noisy place, I set the phone to also vibrate so I can feel it. I was able to hear it ring in a noisy Walmart parking lot next to an 8 lane highway though.

Lisa, if you want to keep the screen scrolling and you want to control it with the touch button (not the screen), do you have to keep tapping or can you just keep pressing the touch button? And, when you keep pressing the touch button and you set the sound on, does it keep ringing?